by Robin Blake
The slipway was built of two parallel stone walls, 10 feet apart, which diminished in height as they sloped down to, and into, the river. The space between them was filled by earth and gravel to form a short but wide pathway into the water.
‘I suppose he slipped off the side here,’ I said. ‘The water’s deep. He got too near the edge and his feet went from under him, or he lost his balance.’
Fidelis crouched down, examining the edge of the walling.
‘Could he swim?’
I almost laughed.
‘Like a bag of nails. He wouldn’t have lasted long.’
Fidelis moved to the other side of the slipway and inspected the retaining wall on that side. ‘There are no traces to support your theory, Titus. He went into the water wearing iron-shod clogs, did he not? If it was from here he slipped, as likely as not we’d be seeing fresh scrapes somewhere on the parapet to show where his feet went out from under him. There are none.’
Having assured himself of this, Fidelis rose and joined me in watching the business on the other bank. The bearers had loaded the litter onto Robert Battersby’s craft, then retired to the bank. But one of them immediately saw that they would still be needed on our side of the river, to carry the litter up to the inn. At this point they all re-embarked. Battersby wasn’t happy. He argued with them, waving his arms and seemingly asking for their fares. None were paid and after a while Battersby realized he would be better off bringing the bearers across, but without tickets, than he would with no bearers and the need to make his own arrangements for the corpse when he got to this side. So at last, with bad grace, he cast off and he and his son began winding the travel rope. Antony Egan was coming home.
Chapter Three
AS SOON AS he had made fast the ferry, and the litter was on its way along the road to the inn, Battersby bore down on me bristling with indignation.
‘I shall bill you fivepence, Coroner, for these five crossings, and another four for the men going back. I’m not doing good works here. I’ve a living to make.’
‘Five crossings?’ I said. ‘You’d charge a fare for a dead man, Robert?’
Battersby pulled a printed card from his shirt pocket and thrust it in front of my eyes.
‘This here is my tariff sheet, see? It gives the crossing charge for people, and stock, and carts, and horses, and donkeys, and barrels, and bundles, but it says nowt about corpses. So I’ve to decide. It’s a penny per person, a farthing per large bundle. You’re a lawyer. What do you say it was that I just ferried over – a person or a bundle?’
‘Well, that’s an interesting question. I am not sure the law has a definitive answer.’
He shook his finger at me.
‘And till it does, I’m billing you for a person.’
He returned to his boat and I looked around for Fidelis. He was back on shore, surveying the riverbank on either side of the slipway. Here, it was kept clear of reeds and thick vegetation and Fidelis was looking closely into the grass at a place on the bank downstream of the slipway.
‘See this, Titus,’ he called. ‘I think I’ve found the place where he went in.’
He was inspecting two parallel muddy scrapes that went straight down the bank to the water, wide enough apart to have been made by a man’s sliding feet. This was close to the end of the cleared section of bank, where it gave way to some denser vegetation of bushy blackthorn, gorse and bramble. The ground he was hovering over was patched with clumps of coarse grass, but otherwise the covering was weed, and it was this that had been disturbed by whatever had slid down.
‘These are slide marks freshly made,’ he observed. ‘And there are additional indentations in the ground towards the bottom. And, look, a clump of grass has been half pulled up. He will have grabbed at it trying to save himself.’
‘Where?’ I said, hurrying towards him. ‘Show me!’
Looking back on that moment, I see that I had forgotten all my feelings for Elizabeth’s drowned uncle and his bereft daughters. I was immersed in the sudden feverish delight of wrestling with a puzzle. It was the lawyer in me coming out, the one who could trawl for hours through documents and witness statements in search of evidence to clinch a proof. Fidelis, as a physician, similarly absorbed himself in piecing together signs and symptoms to establish the truth of a disease. Though medicine and law have their differences in method and mentality, the doctor and the lawyer have this in common: the desire to connect disparate pieces of evidence and find the truth that links them.
I looked around the immediate area from which, conjecturally, Antony Egan slipped to his death. A small distance away, where the thick overgrowth began, I noticed something dark lodged in a blackthorn bush that hung above the bank, almost over the stream.
‘What’s that?’
I pointed.
From where he was Fidelis could see nothing. He climbed back up the bank to join me and squinted at the dark shape in the bush.
‘I don’t know.’
‘It could be a bird’s nest.’
‘I doubt it. But let’s see.’
A few inches taller than me, and with the help of a long stick that he found in the bushes, Fidelis was able to poke at the thing until it came loose, lodging fortuitously onto the end of the stick. He brought it down. It was not a bird’s nest, but a very old black tricorn hat.
‘Do you think this might be Antony’s?’ he said.
‘By the look of it, yes.’
He handed the hat to me.
‘Then it is evidence,’ he said, ‘to be kept safe.’
I turned the hat over and over in a melancholy and reflective way. It was not a pristine object: the nap was almost off it and the inside of the crown was shiny with grease.
‘He did favour plain old hats like this. But there must be hundreds like it in Preston. Who’s to say this one was Antony’s?’
‘His daughters. Ask them.’
‘And even if it is his, how on earth did it get into the bush?’
By now Peter Crane and his men had come into sight, returning from the inn to re-embark on Battersby’s ferry. As they stepped off the road and onto the slipway, I watched as each man in turn, almost in a ritual, met the brunt of the breeze by putting his hand to his hat. No sooner had I seen this than a solution to our puzzle presented itself to my mind.
‘Suppose it was the wind,’ I said. ‘Suppose the hat was blown off his head.’
Fidelis considered.
‘Yes, why not?’ he said at last. ‘Let’s see. He came staggering drunkenly down here on his usual mission. A gust of wind whipped his hat off, and it went flying towards the river. He chased after it, slipped on the wet bank and caused these skid marks. He grabbed a tuft of grass but it came away and he could not save himself. He went splash into the water.’
‘Yes, yes,’ I said, feeling the excitement stirring in me again. ‘And the hat flew up and ended in the thorn bush.’
‘Quod erat demonstrandum.’
I thought for a moment.
‘It is very persuasive, but we do have to be sure that this really is Antony’s hat.’
‘Let’s go up and ask now, at the inn.’
The fire of curiosity was still burning and it tempted me. But then I pulled back, remembering the grief of the two sisters.
‘No. They have enough to think about. I’ll bring it with me tomorrow, and ask them then.’
There was a shout from Battersby that he was ready to leave. So we crossed back to Preston-side with Crane and his men, to whom I gave tuppence each for their trouble, and produced a shilling for the ferryman. He slipped it into his money pouch and turned to move away, but I took hold of his arm.
‘What?’
‘By my reckoning it’s only elevenpence I owe you, Mr Battersby. Antony Egan made just the one crossing, as he’d swum the other way.’
With a rasping sigh Battersby returned me a penny.
‘Robert Battersby is a proper Charon, Luke,’ I murmured as we walked away. ‘He charges a
fare to dead men.’
‘Charon? Who’s that?’
Fidelis had a sharp mind, second to none when it came to logical reasoning. He also had great knowledge of new discoveries in natural philosophy, whether published in the Transactions of the Royal Society or by any number of other corresponding clubs to which he subscribed. He also knew much about money and the banking system, about mathematics, music (he played the harpsichord with skill), chemistry and about fashion in dress, both male and (more surprisingly) female. Yet he had read hardly any classical authors, and his knowledge of poetry seemed to be confined to Mother Goose.
‘Charon!’ I exclaimed. ‘You must know! The ferryman who took the dead across the river Styx to Hades, in the ancient myth.’
‘Why should I bother myself with mythology? I am interested in what is verifiable: the truth of today, not the lies of our ancestors.’
‘But literature is not lies!’ I protested, though I was not sure I would be able to defend the proposition in a court of law.
* * *
Fidelis, having business elsewhere, left me on Fisher Gate and I made my way home to Cheapside. Reaching the Moot Hall, the seat of Preston’s government which stood at the top of my street, I noticed a small crowd had gathered around a florid fellow, dressed in a gown-like greatcoat patched with different-coloured pieces of cloth, and embroidered with arcane symbols and zodiac signs. He was displaying an egg to his audience, which he then made a show of swallowing, before producing it from beneath the collar of the man who stood in front of him. This drew some applause so that, affecting to be encouraged, he now brought out a pack of cards and began to perform tricks of remarkable dexterity, repeatedly making fools of his audience’s judgement – mine included. Even more remarkable, I thought as I walked up to my door, was how amused we all were to be made such fools of.
Going in, and remembering the nature of the news I was bringing, I made an effort to quell my amusement. As it always was by this hour of the morning – just past ten – the house was aired, swept, refreshed and quiet. I found Elizabeth sitting in the kitchen with her handkerchief in her hand, and her eyes fixed on what lay in front of her on the table. As soon as I saw what it was, I knew that Elizabeth had already heard what I’d come in to tell her: a fresh salmon lay there gleaming in its dish.
‘Oh, Titus!’ she cried, rising and throwing her arms around me. ‘I went to the fish stall for today’s meal. They told me what happened. Poor Uncle Antony! How terrible to die alone. How more terrible to drown.’
I stroked her hair, kissed her ear and pressed her to me.
‘There there.’
I don’t know who first came out with the words of comfort that I had just uttered. What on earth do they mean? Yet for some reason they are the first that leap to the tongue when someone is crying in one’s arms. Just the balm of a voice is all that’s needed, maybe, the sound of another person paying attention.
‘There there,’ I said again.
‘He was so unhappy, so…’
She could not finish the sentence, as a new wave of crying came over her.
‘And now he has been released from his unhappiness,’ I said.
She raised her head from my chest and looked at me.
‘How did it happen?’
‘I think, almost certainly, that he slipped on the riverbank, in the dark. He may have been chasing his hat.’
‘His hat?’
‘Yes. In the wind. And since he wasn’t sober, well…’
‘Didn’t they miss him at the inn? Didn’t they look for him?’
‘They didn’t know he was dead, or even missing, until I told them this morning. Your uncle had a habit of going out walking alone at night, and often didn’t return until his daughters had gone to bed. Last night he didn’t return at all. But when I called they thought he had come home safe, after they had all retired to bed, and was lying late.’
‘I must go to them. And then I’ll hurry to Broughton to tell Mother. I would like to get there before rumour does, though I expect I shan’t be in time. Shall I stay the night and bring her back with me in the morning?’
Broughton was two or three miles out of town on the northerly road, so this was a good plan.
‘Yes. I am sure your mother will want to attend her brother’s inquest, and comfort her nieces.’
Calling our maid Matty, she left instructions for serving the midday meal, and asked the girl what she thought she might give me for my supper. Matty glanced at me, and then at the salmon.
‘No. That had better wait until tomorrow, when I return,’ Elizabeth said firmly. ‘You are only fifteen and not yet ready to be cooking so beautiful a fish.’
The girl looked crestfallen.
‘Don’t worry about me at all, Matty,’ I said firmly. ‘You just feed yourself tonight. I’ll take some supper at the White Bull.’
When Elizabeth had left, I crossed the hall and passed through the baize-covered door that separates our living quarters from my business rooms. In the outer room I found Furzey, my clerk, at his writing desk.
‘Antony Egan of the Ferry Inn is dead,’ I told him, as I passed him on my way through to the inner room, my own domain. ‘They fished him out of the river – and I mean that exactly.’
Furzey did not look up from his writing.
‘Then you’ll need an inquest jury,’ he said drily.
‘Just so.’
I went through, leaving the door open, and sat behind my own desk. Three or four letters had come in and I began breaking their seals. All were on business arising from the legal practice I carried on alongside the coronership. When I had read them I looked up again and could see Furzey through the doorway, still bent over his writing.
‘Will you bring in the summonses?’ I called. ‘I’ll draft a list of names. I’ll be looking for anyone from Middleforth Green and the south riverbank, as far as Penwortham I think. Antony was that well known, it shouldn’t be difficult to get people to serve. And another thing, I want you to ferret out his will.’
I had, naturally, always acted for the Egan family and had drawn up Antony’s will some ten years earlier.
‘I’d better know what’s in it before I see his daughters tomorrow.’
I waited patiently for Furzey to stop writing, but his head was still lowered and his pen still squeaked its way across the paper, line after line.
‘Furzey!’ I called. ‘The summonses, please. We have only today to get them out.’
With some elaboration he finished the sentence he was on, wiped his pen and scattered sand across his page.
‘I suppose the day will come,’ he said, ‘when you will finally employ two clerks. But not until you have worked me into an untimely grave.’
This was a common theme of Furzey’s. He was a born agitator.
‘I can’t afford a second clerk, as you well know.’
‘Can’t, you say. Won’t, I say.’
‘Can we please get on with today’s business?’
The jury summonses, in my father’s day, were each of them laboriously handwritten. But when I took over the coronership I went to the printer and had him reproduce and print large numbers of these summonses, with blanks left for the names, dates and other details to be filled in, as occasion demanded. It was a bundle of these sheets that Furzey now brought in to me.
‘See? Those are labour saving,’ I pointed out. ‘Without those, you’d be writing every summons out individually. So don’t tell me your days are harder than they were.’
He merely dropped the sheets down in front of me.
‘There is no such thing, in my opinion, as labour saving, Mr Cragg. When a man saves on one job, he finds another one waiting.’
With Furzey, one never enjoyed the last word. I sighed and asked again that he produce the Egan will.
* * *
The White Bull Inn stood at the heart of the town and I had only to turn left out of my front door, take the few steps to the end of Cheapside, and cross Market Place to g
et there. The inn stood on the north side, an old-fashioned wood-frame building, yet possessed of a sense of its own magnificence, and roundly contemptuous of puny rival establishments in and around town. From across Market Place the Moot Hall clock was striking six as I pushed hungrily through its swinging doors and smelled the roast meats turning on their spits, and the puddings steaming in the kitchen. The price would not be the cheapest but I would get a good supper.
From the middle of the big stone-flagged hall in front of me rose a wide oak staircase, to the left of which were the double swing doors that led to the grand dining hall, with its four tall windows ranged above Market Street. On the right, looking out on the market itself, lay two rooms, the taproom and coffee room.
The dining hall was reminiscent of our old hall at the Temple, during my student days. Diners sat at three rows of long tables running the length of the room, except for the High Table, which was arranged laterally across its end. Here the quality would be seated, not on forms as were the rest of us, but on high-backed chairs with stuffed seats. The wall behind the central chair displayed a great corporation coat of arms wreathed in lavish gilt foliage – the room was used for the largest of our civic banquets – and the rest of the available space on the walls was taken up with portraits of nobles and dignitaries connected with the town: the Earl of This, Lord That and His Worship the Other.
Even before going in I was aware of an unusual hubbub. Once inside I could see that the tables at the far end of the hall, including the High Table, were occupied by a rout of thirty or forty, gorging on a meal of roast beef, pickles and, to wash them down, superior ales from Burton-on-Trent. I recognized most of them as freemen of the town, with a sprinkling of out-of-towners unknown to me. Sitting at High Table in the president’s chair was Sir Harry Hoghton, who had served as one of our Members of Parliament for longer than most people could remember. He lived at Hoghton Tower, 8 miles away. Beside him was a gentleman of about fifty who, compared with Sir Harry’s florid bearing, was scrawny and a little lugubrious, and who looked nervously about him, picking at his food and saying little. This was Francis Reynolds, a Manchester man. For the last year he had lived largely in Preston, cultivating the electors – or trying to – in order to get himself in as Hoghton’s fellow MP. Beside him to my surprise sat the curly-haired stranger who I had last seen being packed out of the Ferry Inn parlour by Mary-Ann Egan. He cut a confident, lively figure in this company, laughing and joking with those around him, proposing toasts and singing snatches of songs. I noticed him paying particular attention to Reynolds, hanging on any words the fellow spoke and drawing him into the general conversation whenever possible, while at the same time conferring closely with the man on his other side. This was Ralph Randall, Sir Harry’s steward.
